The Dead Speak Through Beaks

Dr. Joe Darrow’s freshly deceased wife nags him from beyond the grave. All women have the power to do this.

T’was a mud slide that made a pancake out of the Third World bus she was riding in while tending to sick jungle kids with no HMO worth mentioning. Raising the bar on this tragedy was that his wife was also pregnant – presumably with his child.

At a hospital in the “Hurry up and take ’em to Disneyland” ward, a kid whose heart keeps stopping comes back to life and tells Darrow that he’s seen his dead wife on the Other Side. Then his dead wife’s parrot, trained to say “Honey, I’m home!” every time she walked through the door, wakes Darrow up in the middle of the night (stupid bird) by invoking that very mantra. Then there are all these signs and eerie things happening that couldn’t really be happening.

Thinking he’s losing his mind, he believes corpses are talking to him (they are), that sick kids can see beyond the veil of death (they can), and that parrots crap all over the kitchen when frightened (they do).

The trail of spooky signs leads him to the vacation destination of his wife’s demise. You shouldn’t have to guess what he finds as the eerie clues practically spell it out, but with wavy lines and bird poop symbolism. Yapping parrots aside, Dragonfly (2002) is a taut paranormal drama covered in suspense and bird poop. Sorry, couldn’t resist one more.